Category Archives: UCTV Prime

Lately, the subject of added sugar in our diets has been in the news. Most recently the FDA announced the first makeover of the nutrition label since it appeared twenty years ago. One of the big changes is the requirement to note how much added sugar is in a product. The new labeling now indicates a food’s naturally occurring sugar as well as its added sugar content.

Changes like these have been reverberating around the globe. Before the FDA’s changes in labeling, countries like France and Mexico increased taxes on sugary drinks specifically to treat the epidemic of added sugar’s health effects in their countries, and The United Nations identified the cost of treating the chronic health effects of added sugar as a grave threat to world economies.

One reason for these seismic changes in global health policy is UC San Francisco endocrinologist Dr. Robert Lustig, a leader in the movement to recognize that sugary foods are at the root of the obesity epidemic and the increase in metabolic disease. As a principal in UC San Francisco’s Center for Obesity Assessment and Treatment, Dr. Lustig is a rigorous scientist digging for the reality about foods’ effects on our health.

While a tireless researcher and clinician, his contributions to this movement in the public sphere are many. One of the most seminal of these was one of UCTV’s most popular programs, Sugar: The Bitter Truth, which details exactly how added sugar corrupts human metabolism. This stark expose of the consequences of added sugar has been viewed over 4 million times on YouTube.

The program resonated throughout media, from The New York Times, to UK’s Channel 4’s Dispatches, to CBS’ Sixty Minutes to CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, bringing out the hard facts about added sugar to an often-disbelieving world.

That one lecture was so popular that UCTV’s YouTube Original Channel UCTV Prime followed with the multi part series The Skinny on Obesity. Featuring Lustig and his colleagues at UC San Francisco detailing the insidious effects of added sugar on human health, the series has been viewed over 1.6 million times on YouTube.

And so Dr. Lustig and UCTV continue. Last October, Dr. Lustig shared the latest information about added sugars with the UCTV program Fat Chance: Fructose 2.0 and released The Fat Chance Cookbook, a companion to his New York Times Best Seller Fat Chance.

And now, for the first time, the CDC has reported a decline in childhood obesity in 2 to 5 year olds.

Better research, better information, and practical steps to improving the health of people around the globe — hopefully the bitter truth will lead to a sweeter future.

UCLA’s School of Nursing has partnered with the Union Rescue Mission to provide tuberculosis testing for those on Skid Row. The UCLA Newsroom gives us an inside look at the clinic within the Union Rescue Mission and the work they are doing to combat a recent outbreak of TB in the area.

“The first shoot we had scheduled was in Gladys Park a few blocks away from the clinic. They do an outreach when the park opens up and they offer testing,” said Sebastian Hernandez, Manager of the Broadcast Studio, who was involved in the filming of this documentary.

UCLA Today reports, “Public health officials have identified 78 TB cases that have occurred on skid row in 2007-2012. Of those cases, 60 people were homeless. And of those 60, 11 died of TB. All of these cases could have been treated with medication, the county reported.”

The School of Nursing offers testing to all who are willing, whether or not they are staying at the mission.

“It’s a different reality down there [in Gladys Park]. It’s a shady part of town, but you recognize that they are just people trying to cope. It was different inside the mission. People are more at ease. It feels like a safer place for the people living there.”

Hernandez says that the rescue mission seems like it can be a launching pad to get people off the streets and presents them with many different health care services.

“It’s valuable to recognize that there are a bunch of different steps involved in addressing homelessness and all the issues surrounding it. They seem to do a good job of giving the residents the comprehensive care that they need,” says Hernandez. “We need to be aware that a process is necessary and no ‘one free lunch program’ is going to solve the issue. People can mention how homelessness is sad but I hope that seeing this can inspire people to really get beyond guilt and actively support broad policies that address homelessness.”

What if you could explore the entire span of history — both human and planetary — with just a few mouse clicks?

That’s the idea behind ChronoZoom, a zoomable, multimedia timeline conceived by UC Berkeley student Roland Saekow to help visualize history and to assist researchers in viewing large amounts of data to find new historical connections.

UC Berkeley geology professor Walter Alvarez and his students have teamed up with Microsoft Research Connections engineers to make this web-based software possible, and you can see just how far they’ve come in the latest video from UCTV Prime.

Then have some fun poking around the Beta version on the ChronoZoom website. What slice of history will you click to?

“Building It Better: Earthquake-Resilient Hospitals for the Future” nabbed the bronze in the Documentary category for its behind-the-scenes look at the rigorous earthquake testing UC San Diego researchers put their five-story mockup of a hospital through in order to better understand how the many complex systems within hospital buildings perform after earthquakes. Produced by UCTV’s Rich Wargo, in partnership with the California Seismic Safety Commission, the program explores the history of seismic safety for California’s hospital infrastructure, and what is being done to secure its future.

Also taking home the bronze for documentary was “San Diego Opera Spotlight: Moby-Dick,” producer John Menier’s in-depth look behind-the-scenes at the West Coast premiere of Jake Heggie’s “Moby-Dick,” based upon the classic novel by Herman Melville.

The Telly Awards is the premier award honoring the finest film and video productions, groundbreaking web commercials, videos and films, and outstanding local, regional, and cable TV commercials and programs.

Look at some of the research taking place at UC Santa Barbara’s Solid State Lighting and Energy Center, get a preview of what the future holds when it comes to lighting and power use and discover how Professor Nakamura’s work continues to affect the world.